Graphic by Justin Olivares.

Every Easy Read or Plain English resource produced by easyread.tech bears the Justin Olivares touch. 

As the lead Graphic Designer and Illustrations Artist at easyread.tech, Justin works hard to deliver accessible resources to a number of clients, and also works within the illustrations team to conceptualise and develop the original Easy Read illustrations you can find in our Easy Read documents and illustrations library. 

Justin is a valued member of our easyread.tech team, and in this interview, we have the rare opportunity to hear from the quiet achiever, contributing heavily to the accessible communications scene in South Australia. 

Please introduce yourself, let us know a bit about who you are and what you do.

Hi, I’m Justin, the lead Graphic Designer and Illustrations artist at easyread.tech. I’m a young Filipino designer who has a passion for anything arts and design-related. I’m also a big fan of anything sports and music-related as well. As the lead Graphic Designer and Illustrator Artist, I oversee and create the designs for the characters, and produce the Easy Read and Plain English resources.
 

How did you get into the graphic design business?

I got into the industry with my love for drawing at a young age. Also, my uncle from the Philippines was in a similar industry (architecture), and seeing his work encouraged me to pursue graphic design as a career.

Can you talk us through the creative process behind designing an Easy Read or Plain English document?

The design process is essentially a 3-step process. First, it begins with the transformation of non-Easy Read or non-Plain English text to an Easy Read or Plain English format.

When this process is complete, we then move to the second step, the ‘document design’ process. Using InDesign, we copy in the Easy Read or Plain English language across the document. While the text is being inserted, two other processes are happening simultaneously. First is planning which easyread.tech characters are appropriate for the document’s context, and second is searching through the illustrations library and selecting illustrations from what we already have. While our library is quite vast, we occasionally run into situations where new illustrations are required to be created for the resource, and so our easyread.tech content team would plan out a list of what custom illustrations need to be developed.

Once steps one and two have been completed, we finally move into step three, which is an internal review process with the easyread.tech team. This process involves searching for any grammatical errors, formatting issues or illustrations that don’t quite fit the accompanying text. This part of the process is what makes our documents perfect for our audience both from a design and accessibility lens.

What are the most important design principles that guide you when designing accessible resources?

Having some background knowledge from studying typography provided me with some guidance as to developing Easy Read documents. From a graphic designer's perspective, we want to create text that is accessible for everyone to read. To achieve this, InDesign provides a typographic feature called ‘typesetting’, which alters letters and words by changing the spacing between each sentence or each individual word or letter. The usage of proper typesetting creates accessible documents due to how some letters next to each other can cause confusion visually. For example, ‘M’ and ‘N’ next to each other, for someone without a learning disability, might look fine. However, for someone with a learning disability, the letters can start to merge into long or big paragraphs. Therefore, typesetting each letter to be consistent in spacing makes a difference for accessibility needs. 

What are some of the challenges you face when designing accessible documents compared to doing more standard graphic design work?

A challenge that I face when working with accessible documents is configuring the spacing between each paragraph. Ideally, we want to leave a 6mm gap between each paragraph and limit each paragraph to at least 4 lines to keep the text consistent across the document. However, this might not always be the case. In some instances, there could be text that goes beyond 4 lines and cannot be shifted to a new paragraph. This could lead to a ripple effect that changes the formatting for the subsequent pages, which could lead to issues such as additional pages, which could lead to spacing that is inconsistent, or text that should be under one booklet spread, all of a sudden spanning over multiple pages.

All of these challenges are part of working a standard graphic design job. However, the only difference that separates working with accessible documents and standard graphic design jobs is the specific attention required to ensure that the document is accessible and easy to read as a result of the formatting.

Why is accessibility so important in graphic design?

As a graphic designer, accessibility can sometimes be the least of our worries when it comes to designing anything. Innately, we want to create something that is beautiful at first. However, after understanding that accessibility is just as important as the beauty of design, I realise that it can make reading resources more enjoyable and not a chore or unnecessarily difficult.

What are your sources of inspiration when developing Easy Read illustrations?

Our inspiration for developing Easy Read illustrations comes from within the disability sector and what their daily activities or needs are. An example of this could be a person brushing their teeth. When I think of this scenario, I break it down to the objects and movements. This would be the toothbrush, toothpaste and even the action of brushing teeth. This process could lead to different ideas correlating with that scenario, such as going to the dentist or flossing teeth. This cycle continues till I can exhaust the idea of a person brushing their teeth.

As the Illustrations Artist for easyread.tech, I am always open to hearing suggestions for what illustrations could be added to our library, as I’m a firm believer that our audience knows more about their own challenges and what their regular day-to-day looks like.

How do you envision the future of graphic design and digital art, particularly in terms of accessibility and inclusivity?

Well, it’s hard to predict the future of graphic design in terms of accessibility. I can only imagine and believe that accessibility within design will become more relevant as the increase for further inclusivity within organisations is required. With easyread.tech leading this space in South Australia, I believe we can make a change in how we look at design and accessibility together.